I was "dye"ing to see it, so I skyped her as soon as she popped in after her appointment with Colleen.

Ollie came to see what was up...

I said, "Ollie, do you like Heather's hair?"

"No," he said. "I just like my strawberry milk," and took a swig.

What does a toddler know about hair anyway?

Oliver has a really hard time with the school business.

Jesse is Oliver's favorite person, and that fact that Jesse is always gone, or is always studying makes us all a little blue, especially Oliver.

Sure, he puts on a brave face and distracts himself with toys, snacks, and blues clues.

But when you're reading the monster book about feelings, and you ask Oliver what makes him sad, his little bottom lip will pop out, and he will always say, "I'm sad when my Daddy goes to schoo."

Yesterday, Jesse took and passed his last test of the semester (HOORAY!), He came home and played cars with Oliver. He took Oliver to the park, and snuggled with him on the couch.

Ollie was in heaven!

This morning, Jesse had one more class scheduled, so that the teachers could have one more chance to try to prepare them for their clinical year (on the 28th, Jesse starts a cycle of two back to back five week rotations, followed by two weeks off that will last until August of next year.)

As soon as Oliver heard Jesse talking about going to school, Oliver acted as though he had been tricked! As though all the playing and the park meant nothing if Jesse was just going to abandon him today.

Hopefully we can all make the most of the next two weeks, and then cross your fingers that my plan to distract Oliver with Grandpa, Grandma, Andre, Weddings, Swimming, and so on, will help him get over the shock of the heinous new school schedule.

And hopefully the next year will go by faster than the last one.

Sitting in the chapel before the meeting started, whispering to each other about what it means to be reverent, I asked Oliver to tell me what the meeting was for and why we needed to be reverent and he said to me,

Last weekend, during conference, when President Uchdtorf conducted the first session, I told Oliver his name and that he liked airplanes a lot.

"Yep. Deiter F. Uchdorf likes airplanes!" Ollie repeated.

When president Monson spoke, I told Oliver his name and that he was the our prophet.

Ollie nodded and said "Yeah, Dieter F. Uchtdorf likes airplanes and Thomas S. Monson likes cars!"

I had pretty much given up hope of seeing any Cherry Blossoms this year... there were just too many conflicts, and this one car business was making it difficult to manage necessary tasks and responsibilities, let alone frivolous day trips. So you can imagine my surprise and elation when I got home last night and Jesse informed me that I would indeed be able to go to Washington D.C. today to see those glorious pink blossoms. He's pretty fantastic.

So Oliver and I dropped Jesse off with his carpool buddy Rose (who is kind of a saint), made preparations for our day trip, and headed to Greenbelt to catch a train...er...commuter rail.

I'll have you know that I successfully navigated the Metro and D.C. without any trouble ALL BY MYSELF today.Which may not seem like a lot, but the thought of it gives me great anxiety.  The ticket machines...and the train transfers between lines, and feeling disoriented every time I exit a building in the city... I did it all anyway!

Also, I bought a Smart Trip fare card...so I'm pretty much legit now.

But here's the best part:

Just after Oliver and I had extricated ourselves from the hoard of picture taking people near the entrance to the basin, we plopped down on a shady bit of grass somewhere between Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt to bask in majesty of the Tidal Basin in full bloom.


We munched on cookies, and every once in a while, I managed to snap a photo without 87 thousand people in it. We enjoyed the view of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial all dressed up in soft pink, and breathed in the scent of cherry blossoms as it danced past our noses on the wind...

...and we got a phone call from our mutual friend Jesse! He informed us that classes had been canceled for the afternoon, and since he was at a metro station in Bethesda ANYWAY, he would be joining our little escapade in no time at all.



So we ate some more cookies, sipped some more water, snapped some more pictures and enjoyed ourselves until Jesse got there and then we carried on.

Jesse totally made me pose for this photo. I felt super awkward, but he was pretty pleased with the outcome. "Just do it" he said. "It'll turn out to be your favorite picture." He said...

It was just another magical day in Washington D.C.